Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Impact of Richstar on discretionary trusts

As set out in earlier posts, and with thanks to the Television Education Network, today’s post addresses the issue of ‘Impact of Richstar on discretionary trusts’. If you would like a link to the video please email me.

As usual, a transcript of the presentation for those that cannot (or choose not) to view the presentation is below –

Probably the most interesting part of Richstar is that in some respects counter-intuitively, it confirms that trusts remain a very robust structure from an asset protection perspective.

If you actually take a helicopter view of where the court landed in Richstar, it certainly supports this idea that just because an individual happens to be the trustee and beneficiary and appointor will not of itself mean that the trust is ignored and that the assets of the trust will automatically be deemed to be those of the relevant individual.

In contrast however, and the flipside to this argument is that if you do fulfil a number of those roles and the court feels as though that’s enough in combination to create a scenario where a person is effectively the alter ego of the trust, then indeed the trust structure will not provide you any asset protection and the assets will be potentially exposed.